Introducing eSnipe

What does eSnipe do?

eSnipe places bids on eBay just a few seconds before auction close. Instead of placing
your bids directly with eBay, you place them through eSnipe. Our site stores the
information you submit until a few seconds before the end of the auction you are
interested in. At that point, Rovatron places a bid with eBay on your behalf. This
final bidding process works exactly the same way as if you placed the bid manually,
so all eBay bidding rules apply - including proxy bidding. The end result is your
bids being placed with eBay at the last possible moment - this is called sniping,
and eSnipe can do this better than any other website or utility.

How much does eSnipe cost??

eSnipe is free to new users for limited time. After the trial period, eSnipe only charges if you win an auction, even if you lost because your bid was too low. When you do win the cost is 25 cents for items up to US$24.99, 1% of the winning amount for items up to US$1,000 (rounded down to the nearest penny), and a maximum of $10 thereafter. So if you win an item for $47, the fee is 47 cents. If you win an item for $230.58, the fee is $2.30. eSnipe fees are in BidPoints, which you can buy in quantity for discounts. For more details, please visit our BidPoints Official Rules page.

Why would I want to snipe?

To save money and time. eSnipe reduces bidding wars by masking interest in auction items
until the last possible moment. Because auctions on eBay take three to 10 days to
close, emotional overbidding can start soon after the auction opens and last until
the auction closes, instead of mere minutes as is the case in traditional offline
or "outcry" auctions.

eSnipe is popular among buyers of collectibles, who treasure the anonymity
it brings them. News travels among collectors, who prefer to avoid triggering
public interest in an item by bidding on it too early.

Another group that uses eSnipe heavily is buyers outside the continental U.S.,
who like not having to stay up to the middle of the night just to place a bid.

A final group likes eSnipe because it allows bids to be "canceled" until 5
minutes before the auction close, whereas eBay's terms of agreement treat any
bid placement as a contract to buy. Putting off actual bid placement until the
last few seconds gives users a much longer time to change their minds.

Both eBay and eSnipe are reliable services, but extraordinary situations do occur.
It's important that you understand the risks of sniping:

The eSnipe servers could malfunction.

The eBay servers could malfunction.

Your bid could be lost due to a programming or maintenance error on eSnipe's
part.

You must assume the worst-case scenario, that, as on eBay, once you place a bid,
you cannot retract or edit it. Normally of course, this is not the case, and you
can safely edit or cancel a bid within 5 minutes of the snipe time. eSnipe's servers
are exceptionally reliable and well-maintained, but no one can promise 100% reliability
on the Internet. Remember that because your bid is placed just a few seconds before
the close of the auction, there are many errors you only discover after the
auction is over. For example:

If you changed your password on eBay but forgot to change it on eSnipe, eSnipe
would be unable to place the bid in time.

The eSnipe servers could malfunction while you were trying to edit or delete
a bid.

eSnipe's servers prepare the bid 5 minutes in advance of your snipe time,
so if you tried to edit the bid after that time the edit may fail.

eBay's servers could slow down. If their servers were 5 seconds slow and you
had a 3 second snipe, your bid won't get placed. Nor would it get placed if you
were manually sniping under these same conditions.

eBay's servers sometimes stop working, or are rebooted right at the time an
auction closes. Since the servers that accept bids are not the same ones that
display auctions, sometimes it looks like eBay should be able to take a bid when
in fact it cannot.

Why do you require my eBay password?

When Rovatron places a bid on eBay, it does so on your behalf. The bid is placed
with your user ID and password, just as if you were placing the bid yourself.
Your eBay bidding ID and password listed on eSnipemustmatch the
ones you use on eBay exactly, or eBay will reject your bids.

Don't sellers hate eSnipe?

Smart sellers understand that while eSnipe may keep the prices of individual items
down, it increases the pool of potential buyers. Snipers spend a lot of money: millions
of dollars per month using eSnipe alone. They are usually highly motivated but would
rather stay out of an auction than get caught up in a bidding war. This allows them
to keep the price reasonable and buy the item, rather than wait for another auction.

Is there an eSnipe Tutorial?

Why not use a utility on my home computer to snipe?

Most home computers have comparatively slow and unreliable connections to
the Internet.

If the auction closes in the middle of the night, you have to remember to
leave your computer on.

You might absent-mindedly turn off your computer, or it might crash when you're
not around.

If you're using another program or downloading a file in the background it
may slow down your Internet connection.

eSnipe's servers are optimized to place bids reliably and quickly. They run
on very high speed servers with high-bandwidth connections to the Internet. Having
your bids on our server also means you can check their status at work and home
too. Not that you'd be using eSnipe from work, of course.

I bought a new computer. How do I get eSnipe to work on it?

eSnipe is accessible from almost any computer you can access, just login at left
of our home page. You may be used to using SnipeIt!, a convience tool to make eSnipe
easier. However, SnipeIt! is not required to use eSnipe.
SnipeIt! is the utility that lets you
snipe right from within an auction by clicking a button on your toolbar. To learn
how to install visit the SnipeIt! page.

What happens if two eSnipe users bid on the same item?

Remember that proxy bidding rules favor the highest bidder, which trumps bidding
at whatever time, sniped or not. So what you're really asking is "what if multiple
eSnipe users bid the exact same amount on the same item with the exact same buffer
time"? (If it helps you, we've only observed this a couple times in the last million
or so bids.)

The answer: it's undefined -- just whichever user's bid is retrieved from our database
first. eSnipe makes no attempt to arbitrate among eSnipe users sniping on the same
item. Any such attempt would result in a privacy breach, since eSnipe promises not
to disclose your individual bids to a third party.

Does eSnipe work with Mature Audiences auctions?

Not at this time. Because eBay must validate your age to bid on these items, there
are technical complications to the bidding process. If this feature is important
to you, please e-mail Support@eSnipe.com
to let us know you want this feature so that we can help prioritize it based on
demand.

Do I have to leave my computer on for eSnipe to place a bid?

No, you don't have to leave your computer on for eSnipe to place bids for you. That's
the whole reason you place your bid with us-we do it on our servers. There are many
reasons your computer might not be able to place the bid-you accidentally leave
it off; other applications slow it down; a power failure knocks it out; and so on.
Rovatron, on the other hand, is extremely reliable and has nothing else to do but
place bids. eSnipe has many computers running 24 hours a day placing bids for you.
Save some energy. Avoid a rolling blackout, if you're in California. Turn off your
computer and let us do the work for you!

What does eSnipe do with personal information?

We will occasionally email you with eSnipe news. Your personal information is never
provided for sales or advertising purposes to any vendor, market or other third
party. If you owe money to eSnipe and we're unable to collect it, we may need to
give your contact information to a third party for collection purposes.

I have multiple eBay accounts. Can I use them all with eSnipe?

Yes you can. Adding additional eBay bidding ID's is pretty easy. Simply log on
to your eSnipe account. Then click on "My Settings", in the left menu listing.
On this page you will click the "Auction Accounts" tab. Next page, click on "Add
a new bidding account". Enter your eBay bidding ID and it's password. Make sure
that these match your eBay account information EXACTLY, or eBay will reject your
bids. Once you are sure you have entered this correctly, click again on "Add new
bidding account".

Now, when you place a bid, you will see a drop down option for the bidding ID.
Make sure the one you want to register your bid under on eBay is showing in the
window.

What are BidPoints(SM)?

Using eSnipe

What is the ideal buffer time?

The buffer time specifies the number of seconds before the end of the auction that
eSnipe is to attempt to place the bid. Our tests show the ideal buffer time to
be about 4 to 8 seconds. Although we don't recommend it, we have seen many auctions
won with a 2 or 3 second buffer time. The smaller your buffer time, the more likely
you are to miss the end of the auction. The larger your buffer time, the more likely
you bid will be placed, but you also stand a better chance of being out sniped.
If you are concerned about eBay being slow during a very important auction, we recommend
10 seconds to play it safe.

Will eSnipe guarantee that my bids are placed?

eSnipe can't guarantee a bid will be placed. The reason is simple: eSnipe can't
control the rest of the Web. What if eBay servers are down when your bid is supposed
to be placed? What if either eSnipe or eBay is a victim of a denial of service attack?
Even network traffic can cause bids to be lost. But you're never charged for a missed
bid.

What if I place one bid using eBay by hand, and another one using eSnipe? Will eSnipe "trump" me and make me outbid myself?

No, you will not outbid yourself using eSnipe. That's because eSnipe doesn't determine
what the bid should be. eBay does, through its
proxy bidding mechanism.
All eSnipe does is place the bid exactly as you would, using your user ID and password,
and eBay's proxy bidding automatically keeps your bid as low as necessary to win
the auction.

Why didn't my bid go through?

The first thing to check when you have failed to win an auction is the
Rovatron
execution e-mail. The Rovatron e-mail will contain details specific to the bid result.
If you are concerned about eSnipe having system problems, review the
eSnipe ServerStatus page. If you still
have questions, it is important that you go to your My Auctions page and use
the Info link to request support. The support link on your Info page will tell
the eSnipe support staff which bid you want assistance with and can provide a more
detailed answer to your question.

Why don't you show the current price of the item on eBay so I can know if I need to increase my bidding amount?

Including the current price in the My Bids section sounds good, but it poses some
surprising problems. The most important is that our servers would have to check
eBay's servers hundreds of thousands of times a day, with no benefit to eBay. Another
problem is that not even all of eBay's servers can keep prices current. For example,
if you search for an item, then click that item from the search results, you'll
often see a higher price. There's a lag time between eBay's servers maintaining
this information. So eSnipe would suffer the same problem. eSnipe prefers that you
use eBay as much as possible, so we include the link to each item, allowing you
to check the current price quickly and easily. It's better for eBay (you're likely
to see their ads and announcements that way), better for eSnipe (we don't anger
them too much by polling their servers constantly), and, I think, better for you
(you can go straight to the source and get the most up-to-date price).

How Do I...

How do I delete/cancel a bid?

You can cancel bid placement easily up until 5 minutes before the auction is to
be sniped:

First log in on the home page. You are automatically
taken to My Auctions page.

Use the Info link to the right of the Description column.

On the Info page, at the top there is a "Delete" link to remove your
bid.

There is also a way to cancel several bids at once: click the select checkbox
on the left side of the My Auctions page, then press the Delete button at the bottom.
But be careful--there's no way to "undelete" these items.

How do I change my email address?

How do I use multiple eBay accounts with eSnipe?

Adding additional eBay bidding ID's is pretty easy. Simply log on to your eSnipe
account. Then click on "My Settings", in the left menu listing. On this page you
will click the "Auction Accounts" tab. Next page, click on "Add a new bidding
account". Enter your eBay bidding ID and it's password. Make sure that these
match your eBay account information EXACTLY, or eBay will reject your bids. Once
you are sure you have entered this correctly, click again on "Add new bidding
account".

Now, when you place a bid, you will see a drop down option for the bidding ID.
Make sure the one you want to register your bid under on eBay is showing in the
window.

Rovatron

What is Rovatron?

Rovatron(sm) is the name of our service for placing bids on eBay at
the time you specify, checking the status of the bid, and emailing you
with the results. The Rovatron service uses proprietary eSnipe
technology including a group of custom programs running on multiple
high-performance servers to deal with slow server performance, eSnipe
and eBay network bottlenecks, peak bid placement periods, and the many
other real-time performance issues that threaten the integrity of your
bid. The Rovatron service uses software that is constantly being tuned
and improved to distribute its load over multiple processes on
multiple computers, running on multiple Internet backbones, on several
different databases.

I lost an auction. Rovatron told me "bid not high enough", why does eBay history page not show my bid?

You said "Bid was not high enough" but it was higher than the bid that won! Why didn't Rovatron place my bid?

You have been bitten by the notorious "minimum increment" problem, in which the
amount extra you bid wasn't enough to win the bid because the increment between
the two is higher than your extra amount.

In detail: The minimum increment is the smallest amount you must add to the current
winning bid to become the winner yourself. It ranges from $.05 to $100, depending
on the bid amount. It increases as the bid price increases. You can discover what
it is during the auction by looking down at the area where you'd enter the bid amount
manually, or by referring to the chart above. Especially on larger-ticket items,
it is often more than $1.

For example:

You place a bid on a guitar, posting a maximum price of $302.

At the time the bid closed, a guitar is currently selling for $300, and your
bid comes back as not high enough.

The reason: the minimum increment is $5. That means the next bid would have
to be at least $305 to win the auction.

The guitar ends up selling for $300, because your $302 bid was too low.

eSnipe Servers

What happens to my bid if the eSnipe Web server goes down?

The most important job of Rovatron, eSnipe's scheduler, is placing bids at as close
to your specified bid time as possible and it will do so even if the Web server
itself goes down. eSnipe actually runs on several
dedicated servers, which are fast computers with high-speed connections
to the Internet. These computers run 24 hours a day except during a portion of eBay's
scheduled maintenance periods from 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Pacific Time. On the rare
occasions that the eSnipe Web server goes down or you are not able to log in, chances
are very high that Rovatron is still placing bids. Of course there's at tradeoff:
it means that if the Web server is down and you are not able to log in, then you
are not able to edit or delete bids either. Since most people would want their bids
to continue being placed even if the Web server is down, we err on the side of continuing
operation where possible, rather than halting all operation if only part of the
site becomes unavailable.

How do you ensure that your clock is synchronized with eBay's? After all,
we're only talking a few seconds here. What if your clock is 7 seconds slower than
eBay's and my snipe time is 5 seconds?

eSnipe synchronizes every 15 minutes to the
U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock and
we assume eBay does too. eSnipe has never been more than 1 second off of eBay's
time. You can verify this by comparing the email you get from Rovatron with the
bid history on eBay.